New Study: ObamaCare Will Reduce Incomes Among Middle Class Families

A new study by the liberal think tank Brookings Institution finds that ObamaCare will reduce the incomes of hard-working middle class families– some of the very people President Obama and Democrats claim the massive new law will help.

“The ACA may do more to change the income distribution than any other recently enacted law,” Brookings scholars Henry Aaron and Gary Burtless wrote in a study reported by the Washington Examiner.

Their report showed that ObamaCare will diminish the incomes of Americans making between $21,000 and $40,000 a year by 0.9 percent. Similarly, families earning between $40,000 and $65,000 and between $65,000 and $104,000 will also see a 0.9 percent decrease, a reduction no family can afford in the current dismal economic state.

The Brookings study suggests that because ObamaCare makes health care more expensive, employers will shoulder more of the financial burden, resulting in a reduction in wages.

Seniors too will experience a decrease in their income by 1.3 percent, 1.7 percent, and 1.1 percent, using the income groupings above, because of the law’s cuts to Medicare.

Ironically, President Obama and Democrats stand by their failed law, even though it continues to harm families and seniors alike, making it harder for Americans to bring home a bigger portion of their paycheck.

From Washington Examiner:

A new study finds that ObamaCare’s redistribution will be stunningly lopsided. Scholars at the liberal Brookings Institution have discovered that ObamaCare will increase the income of Americans in the lowest 20 percent of the income scale, and especially in the lowest ten percent. But all other income groups — even people who make very modest incomes in the $25,000 to $30,000 range, as well as all income brackets above that — will experience a decline in income because of ObamaCare.

In other words, ObamaCare is going to cost some of the very people it was designed to help.

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Aaron and Burtless also found that Americans age 65 and older will see their incomes drop, and by bigger margins. Those at the bottom of the household income scale — same boundaries as above — will see a drop of 1.3 percent, and those in the next lowest group will see a decrease of 1.7 percent. The next income category will see a 1.1 percent drop, and the top two categories will see drops of 0.7 and 0.2 percent. Since most Americans in that age group are on Medicare, it seems likely the income decreases are caused mostly by ObamaCare’s cuts in the rate of growth of Medicare spending.